Donna Catherine de Reinoso, a nun in the same convent, Donna Margaret de Santisteban, and Donna, Maria de Miranda, nuns of Santa Clara at Valladolid, were likewise strangled and burnt as Lutherans.
Pedro de Sotelo and Francis d'Almarzo suffered the same punishment for Lutheranism, with Francis Blanco, a New Christian; who had abjured Mahometanism, and had afterwards fallen into error.
Jane Sanchez, of the class of women called Beates, was condemned as a Lutheran: when she was informed of her sentence, she cut her throat with a pair of scissors, and died impenitent some days after in prison. Her corpse was taken to the auto-da-fé on a bier, and burnt with her effigy.
Sixteen persons were condemned to penances. I shall only mention those distinguished for their rank or the nature of their trials.
Donna Isabella de Castilla, the wife of Don Carlos de Seso, voluntarily confessed that she had adopted some of her husband's opinions; she was condemned to wear the san-benito, to be imprisoned for life, and to be deprived of her property.
Donna Catherine de Castilla, the niece of the above, suffered the same punishment.
Donna Francisca de Zuñiga Reinoso, sister to Donna Catherine, who was burnt in the same auto-da-fé, and a nun in the same convent was condemned, with Donna Philippina de Heredia and Donna Catherine d'Alcaraz, two of her companions, to be deprived of the power of voting in her community, and prohibited from going out of the convent.
Antonio Sanchez, an inhabitant of Salamanca, was punished as a false witness; it was proved that he had deposed falsely for the purpose of causing a Jew to be burnt: he was condemned to receive two hundred stripes; was deprived of half his property, and sent to the galleys for five years. The compassion of the inquisitors for this sort of criminals is an incontestable fact, although they did not hesitate to condemn heretics to death, if they had only concealment, or an insincere repentance to reproach them with.
Pedro d'Aguilar, a shearer, born at Tordesillas, pretended to be an alguazil of the Inquisition, and appeared at Valladolid with the wand of the Holy Office on the day of the celebration of the first auto-da-fé; he afterwards went to a town in the province of Campos, where he said that he was commissioned to open the tomb of a bishop, and take the bones to be burnt in an auto-da-fé, as belonging to a man who had died in the Judaic heresy. Pedro was condemned to receive four hundred stripes, to have his property confiscated, and to be sent to the galleys for life. This affair proves that the inquisitors considered it a much greater crime to pretend to be an alguazil of the Holy Office, than to bear false-witness, and to cause the death of a man, the confiscation of his property, and the condemnation of his posterity to infamy!
Such is the history of the two celebrated autos-da-fé of Valladolid, of which so much has been said, although nothing certain was known of them. It is an interesting circumstance that the Inquisition was at the same time proceeding against forty-five persons distinguished for their rank or personal qualities; of these forty-five persons, ten had been arrested. It is not to be supposed that the inquisitors only prosecuted these persons: the trial of Carranza, Archbishop of Seville, was the origin of a great number against bishops and other distinguished individuals. I have confined myself to those of which I could consult the papers; it would be a task beyond the strength of one man to read all that have accumulated in the archives.